The Agentic Interface Has Two Faces. We're Building the Easy One.
a16z says the interface is being rebuilt for agents. They're half right. The harder half is how agents behave with people, and almost no one owns it.
Topic
The Behavioral Layer
A collection of 8 issues
AI Products Have a Behavioral Layer. Almost No One Owns It.
Every AI product has a hidden layer that governs how it behaves. How it expresses confidence. When it escalates to a human. What it does when it is wrong. Whether it earns trust on the second interaction or loses it.
That layer is the product now. And in most companies, no one owns it.
The Self-Maintaining Framework: What AI-Native Operations Actually Look Like
Every morning at 5 AM Pacific, three agents of mine have already drafted their proposed updates to my framework. A fourth is finishing its work on the public website. By the time I sit down with coffee, the day's pull requests are queued for review.
When Regulators Design Better Than We Do: What China's AI Anthropomorphism Law Teaches Product Designers
I've spent years arguing that AI design happens at the behavioral layer, not the interface layer. That the real design decisions aren't about pixels and spacing but about how systems reason, communicate uncertainty, and earn trust. I wrote an entire book about it.
So when China
Neuro-Symbolic AI: Why Behavioral Contracts Work When Prompting Fails
Why prompting fails and how behavioral contracts combine neural intelligence with symbolic rules to create trustworthy, scalable AI systems.
How to Design Trust Into AI Systems (It’s Not What You Think)
Trust isn't a feeling users have about AI—it's designed infrastructure. Learn the five vectors of AI trust (Clarity, Control, Consistency, Disclosure, Repair) that enable systematic human-AI collaboration at scale.
The Hidden Logic Layer: Where AI Design Actually Happens
Every AI+ system has a hidden logic layer that governs how it behaves—determining what data gets included, how uncertainty is expressed, and when to escalate to humans. This invisible layer, not the interface, is where AI design actually happens and competitive advantage is built.
Designing for Trust: Why Explainability Alone Falls Short in AI
Trust in AI is not built solely through explanations. It is earned through consistency, relevance, and ethical design. Explainability helps, but trustworthiness must be designed system-wide, not assumed.